


Why Don't You Figure My Heart Out?

by PoetOnAPuzzle



Category: Avengers
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 07:24:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8047618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoetOnAPuzzle/pseuds/PoetOnAPuzzle
Summary: If Misery loves company, then Happiness is just late to the party. Or how Steve helped Wanda remember that she isn't alone.





	1. Smile Like You Mean It

Steve Rodger's lungs were on fire. Simple as that. Coming up on his twentieth mile, passing the back entrance for what felt like the billionth time, he bolted past the door.   
Keep going. Don't stop. Two words wound over and over on top of each other. A mantra ringing through his head. 

His breath rushed in and out of his lungs, fueling the fire that had begun growing somewhere on his tenth mile. Inhales and exhales falling in time with the flashes of memories racing through his thoughts. Heart thudding away in his chest. A painful thumping that Steve knew had nothing to do with the twenty-first mile he had just finished and everything to do with anxiety pressing in on the peripherals of his mind.

The rapidly approaching blue-white of ice sheets. His arms straining uselessly against the control panel. 

Faster. He needed to go faster. But Captain America's body revolted with his thoughts as they flashed in and out. 

Ice. Frigid, violent, and agonizingly slow. It was coming back. If he stopped running that deathly frost would come back. Would overtake his bones, creeping along his veins until they turned languid and thick with forced sleep. 

Panic slipped its way into his pumping arms and legs. Suddenly, the thought that he was running to outrun something from a far off nightmare became very real. Steve could feel the ice breathing down his neck. Whispering promises of shivers and darkness.

One leg came up and knocked into the other and he found the ground rushing up to meet his face.

Steve landed with a hard thud in the mud and grass. He laid there, in the soft green brush, cloths soaking up the night dew. His breathe rushing in and out of his lungs. His forehead buried in dirt. 

A string of curses filled his thoughts and, for once, he actually let them slip out into the crisp night air. His fist came up and slammed down into the dew-covered ground. It left an imprint deep in the mud.

Super soldier serum or not, Steve had a limit. He thought he might have finally reached it. So Steve slowed, aggravated he couldn't continue. 

Steve wasn't one for quitting, however. So as he rested his hands on his knees, he resolved to hit the gym and set up some of the military grade punching bags that had been stored away for him.

He had to continue. It was still early. If he kept going he might be able to find that dreamless sleep his body craved. Most nights went like this anyway. 

Dreams of ice. Of freezing waters. The slowing of his heart beat. 

Slowly, Steve forced himself to breath. In and out. He could feel it. His body still wired beneath the burning in his limbs. Not from the exercise, but from the nightmare. The nightly terror that invaded the soft floating of sleep. That needed to go. If he was quick, he could get in some food or a protein bar, and continue. If he really pushed, Steve was sure he could find at least three hours of sleep tonight. That was a goal to work towards.

So he pulled himself up, dusted off some dirt, and made his way back. 

Surprisingly, Avengers Tower became a bit of a ghost town at night. Everyone was either hunkered away in their rooms sleeping off the day's mission or training, or had gone away to their private residence. More often than not, Steve found he could run his brutal regiment throughout most of the night without disturbing anyone. 

He figured it was best to grab a quick protein shake and then continue until his body wore itself out enough for a dreamless sleep. 

It came as a little bit of surprise for him to find a light on in the kitchen. Cautiously, he stepped inside, letting the automatic door slide open with a soft click. 

Sitting there at the island, bathed in the soft glow of a data pad, sat Wanda Maximoff. She was dressed in a t-shirt that Steve wasn't sure nearly long enough to be considered actual sleepwear, and her long, bare legs dangled just barely off the ground. She tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear and chewed her bottom lip.

The sight did odd things to Steve's stomach. A foreign sense of warmth spread to his face and Steve suddenly felt like he was intruding on something private. 

Unfortunately, he had been standing in the doorway a little too long, and it slid shut, jabbing him in the arm. Then it proceeded to beep in protest. 

Steve swore under his breath.

Wanda's head shot up, dark eyes darting to rest on his. Whether she meant to or not, her powers had come alive, with tendrils of red mist swirling around her like psychic fangs bared. Steve could feel her alarm slipping it's way into his mind and almost instinctually his hands came up, silently pleading her to ease off.

When she realized who it was, Wanda let her powers taper off, and Steve could feel the relief rolling off her. It was an odd sensation. Everyone in the base knew of her powers, and Wanda had gone through several lectures (most from Natasha) on how not to intrude on people's minds. Yet Steve found it ironic that it was so easy to sense how she felt. You simply had to listen. 

"Captain." She said. 

"Wanda," Steve replied, suddenly very sure he had walked in on a private moment. 

"You should be sleeping." She said after a quiet beat. 

Steve laughed a little nervously, "Shouldn't you be sleeping too?" 

Wanda shrugged. "I was having trouble," she said, accent dusting her words. She set the data pad aside, face down. Steve watched as she brought a cup of tea to her lips and set it aside as well. 

"I know the feeling." 

He shifted from one foot to the other. Making an awkward half lurch half step forward, Steve decided if he had truly intruded on something private, the damage was done and it was best to just get his shake and move right along. He quickly moved into the kitchen and opened a cabinet, pulling one of the bins of protein powder S.H.I.E.L.D had designed for him. 

He set about filling a cup with water and dumping several spoonfuls into the mixture. 

Behind him, he could feel Wanda's eyes on him, boring into his back. He could feel her mind filling the edges of the room like a static charge. Humming against his skin. Suddenly Steve wondered if he was still drenched in sweat and dirt. 

"You're covered in dirt." 

Steve felt himself straighten. Had she read his mind? He turned to her smiling as best as he could. "Yeah, I might have taken a little spill." 

"Why were you outside?" She asked, not intrusively but simply curious. The tail end of her words tilting up in an honest question. 

Steve paused for a second. He could go with the truth or he could lie and risk her powers picking up on it immediately. In the end he decided to go with the truth, but a vague truth at that. 

"I went for a run." 

She cocked her head to the side and said, "At three in the morning?" 

Steve stopped spooning out the protein powder, and felt his mouth open. Ready to say something. Then he thought better on it and just shrugged. 

"Seemed like a good idea at the time." 

"Most things do." 

Steve nodded, unsure of what to make of the comment. He downed the shake in a few gulps and set his things back in the cupboard. Picking up his step he grabbed his gym bag, and paused in the door. The hum of her mind filling the room still echoed like vibrations on his skin. He could feel something from her, but it was wrapped up tightly in her mind. As if her thoughts had coiled in on whatever that feeling was. But he knew there were only two reasons people didn't sleep. 

The first was excitement. Like a kid on Christmas Eve. And that did not seem like Wanda right now. So that left the second option. 

Anxiety. 

The darkness of ones own thoughts. Steve knew full well what that was like. Now that he was tuned into that, it became easier to pick up on that same darkness. It hovered over her like a invisible cloud. He could feel it along that strange line her powers created with people. Abrasive, stifling, and above all, heavy. It weighed down the room.

So Steve paused in the doorway. Glancing over his shoulder he could see her. Staring at the data pad, now back in her hands, illuminating her face in a pale blue light. It was then that Steve noticed how thin she looked. The bags underneath her eyes. The way her shoulders hung low.

He spun on his heel, quick, and Steve saw, and finally understood why she had turned the tablet face down. 

Glowing on the holoscreen was a picture of Pietro. Steve recognized it. It was a memorial article Stark had published for him in honor of his sacrifice against Ultron. 

It just all seemed to click in that moment. The way the room swam with darkness. Not physically, but emotionally. Like she had filled the room to the brim with her grief.

Wanda probably hadn't been expecting him to return. Steve imagined he must have startled her, because she hugged the pad close to her chest, maybe in an attempt to hide it from him. 

Steve didn't look at her as he crossed back into the room and knelt down in front of one of the cabinets at the base of the island. Reaching inside, he pulled out and old wooden box. Placing it on the counter, he pulled out a little packet and handed it to her. 

Cautiously, she eyed him before letting her gaze drift down to the package and then back up to him. 

"What is it?" She asked. 

"Tea?" 

She gave an exasperated sigh, though not an annoyed one, and said,"I know that. I mean why?" 

"Why?" Steve asked, "It's chamomile." 

She arched an eyebrow at him. "What is that?" 

"It's a kind of tea. Supposed to help you sleep." 

She blinked. "Oh…we have a different name for it in Sokovian." She glanced at the packet, then back at him, "Is that box yours?" 

"Yeah. Banner gave it to me as a gift." 

She gave him a small, courteous smile. "It sounds like his type of gift." 

"It's supposed to be real tea. You know, not the mass produced stuff all over the shelves nowadays," Steve smiled, "It'll work better than whatever citrus flavored thing you're drinking now." 

"How did you know I was drinking…" 

She trailed off as Steve tapped his nose and gave her a shrug. "Serum changed a lot of things." 

Wanda nodded. "I see." 

Steve drummed his knuckle on the table, "But yeah, it should help a little. You'd think S.H.I.E.L.D, with all its resources, would be able to at least get us some coffee or tea you couldn't find at the grocery store." 

That earned him another small smile. Steve returned the gesture.

"Well hopefully this will be better than store bought tea,” She said.

"I'm sure it will be."

"As am I." 

Then it occurred to him briefly, that the darkness at the edge of room had receded just a bit. Wanda seemed brighter, and therefore the whole room seemed brighter.

A long silence stretched between them. Neither of them knew what to say, and Steve was almost certain of that. Again, she looked so fragile, staring down at her cup, and the face down holopad. 

"When I came out of the ice, it took a while to hit me." 

Wanda's head darted up, eyes honing in on his. Steve read them quickly, skimming them like a book, hoping they were not willing him to shut up. But he felt no ill will from her, and he could still feel her mind, hovering about the room like a phantom. Steve barreled on, letting the words fall from his mouth. 

"Everything was just...wrong." Glancing again at Wanda, he continued, "My friends, my family. Everyone I had ever known was either dead or too old to remember me." 

When Wanda didn't answer, Steve took that as a good sign.

"In fact everything I had ever known seemed to have...well, died." Steve said, waving a hand about in the air, "The city had changed, the people had changed. Everything was no longer like it used to be. My whole world had been ripped out from underneath me. It hurt so damn much because at the end of the day I knew there was no way of getting it back. The people, the city, the life I had before all this." Steve felt his own sigh escape from between his lips. "The ice took that from me."

Steve could feel Wanda moving against his mind. Looking for something. Like his mind was a keyhole and she was trying to peer through it, looking for answers. Steve imagined she found none because a moment later a rattling breath escaped her this time, and she asked, "How did you go on living?"

"I didn't. Not for a while. In fact I don't think I fully am now either." 

Wanda let out a wry snort, and for a moment Steve was worried he had done something wrong. "Is that why you're out running at three AM?" 

"No, that's for an entirely different set of reasons," he said, feigning embarrassment, hoping she wouldn't catch him in the very obvious lie, "But my point is, I've learned to start trying to find purpose again." 

"You say that like it is easy." 

"It's not. But the point is to not let that stop you from trying." 

Wanda wouldn't look at him. She nodded, silently, still looking away from him. 

"I've had my world ripped away from me once," Steve said, compiling as much conviction and passion as he could muster into his voice, and threw it at her thoughts like a psychic baseball. Feeling it collide with her dark, lonely thoughts, "I know what it's like."

She was silent a long while then. Steve watched as Wanda fiddled with her fingers. Fidgeting. Nervous. "It doesn't feel like there's much else to live for right now." 

One simple sentence. A honest thought. Steve felt as though she had punched him in the gut. His heart sank as the full intensity of her sadness struck him. 

Not knowing whether it was the right decision let alone the smartest one, he reached out. Taking both her hands in one of his. He squeezed gently, willing her to meet his gaze. She did. 

"There is always something more to live for." 

She seemed taken aback by that. Then, slowly, she nodded and Steve didn't need her powers to tell she had listened.

Straightening, and giving her hands one last squeeze, he let go. She seemed smaller in that moment. Fragile. Steve gave her the most honest smile he could.

"Get some sleep when you can, okay?"

"Yeah." She said, holding her eyes on his. Something in that moment changed. Passing between the two of them. Steve felt it. He knew it. Yet, he also knew she still needed her privacy, and time to mourn. He would be there if she ever needed it, but he did not want to interject where he didn't belong. So he gave her one last smile, and made his way to the door.

"Goodnight, Wanda. I'll see you in the morning." He called back, "Hope that tea helps."

"Goodnight, Captain." Before the he hit the button for the door she called out, "And Captain?" 

He turned, "What's up?"

"Thank you." 

Steve smiled, running as much warmth and empathy as he could her way. "Always."

The door slid shut behind him and Steve let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. He had half expected her to give him an evil eye, or snap at him. In fact he had expected the whole decision to backfire in his face. 

But it hadn't. And that was good. He could grasp what Wanda was going through. He knew it all too well. 

And as the night dragged on, and with each sandbag he shattered, Steve wondered what she was doing. Was she still sitting at the counter, mulling away over Pietro's death? Was she sleeping, as he too should have been? 

He could only hope she was. God knew she deserved it. More than any of them, maybe.


	2. Do It For Me Now

A Week passed and the encounter fell by the wayside in Steve's mind. Other things had taken over. He still worked himself into the dirt at night, and he had found a night or two of solid rest, but sleep seemed to want to elude him forever. The night when he had awoken to Natasha sitting at the foot of his bed, hand on his knee, he had been sure of that. 

She lived in New York City. The fact she had returned to the base when there was no pressing mission was a bad sign. The look on her face was so much worse. 

He had stared at the holoscreen for what had seemed like an eternity, feeling like he was clinging to the side of that train all over again. Watching his best friend fall to his death. 

"Shield operatives found the base three days ago. Snow has made tracking exceedingly difficult." 

Steve stared at the screen. The bunker that was just barely visible through the sheets of snow twirling through the air like heavy fog. Pictures flickered across the screen every now and then. Heavily dressed operatives carrying boxes of who knows what through the snow. 

"Scouts picked up signs of electro magnetic pulses and several spikes into the alpha wave spectrum." Natasha continued. 

"Why is this important? What's so special about this base, compared to all the other ones we've seen?" Sam asked, drumming his fingers on desk." 

"This based was supposed to be abandoned. Has been since the 40s." Natasha said, keeping her voice even and calm, "the problem is, the base was used in the winter soldier experiments." 

"And now the base has been reopened?" Vision asked. 

Natasha nodded, sliding her fingers over the holograph. Images of documents and case files filled the room. Steve felt his muscles tense as pictures of the experiments they performed on Bucky floated before him. Casting their ice blue light on the room. It felt like Steve had stepped backing into the lifeless blue of the ice.

"From what we can gather, they're trying to make...more." Natasha said. 

"More what?" Sam chimed in. 

"We don't know. More winter soldiers. More enhanced individuals." 

Steve could feel it then. That same dark shadow that crept along the edges of Wanda's mind. He could almost hear her heartbeat. Maybe she could hear his. He figured they were both beating equally as fast.

"How do we know with one hundred percent certainty that this is what they are doing?" Wanda asked, surprising everyone. She had been quiet, distant even, up until this point. Steve hadn't even felt her mind brushing against his like it often had done before. 

Natasha cleared her throat, "there's been spikes of alpha and beta waves coming from the base. Unnaturally high spikes. Sensors picked up more this morning."

"Beta waves? So what? Tony's suit gives off beta waves." Sam said.

"Not in combination with Mutocycline and high EMF." Steve said, eyes never leaving the holograph. 

"Weren't those two of the --" Sam started but Wanda quickly cut him off.

"Things used to create more of my kind? Yes."

"And more Winter Soldiers." Steve said, voice low. Not realizing how choked and strained he sounded.

"I think we can all agree; something must be done." Vision chimed in. 

Natasha nodded. "I'm going to suggest we--" but Steve was already standing. Making his way to his suit. The fire in his belly was roiling, hot and angry, but beneath that was hope. Hope he could find something that might help him. Something that could lead to Bucky. Maybe even reverse everything that had been done to him. 

"Steve where the hell are you going?" Sam called after him. 

"To get my suit." 

"You could at least stay to give your input on the teams for the mission." Rhodes said.

"I'm going alone." Steve said.

"Steve, that's insane. You aren't going alone." Natasha snapped, "We'll divide up and do this by the books." 

"I'm going alone. End of discussion, Nat." Steve said. Questions filled the room. Dissension among the group. The only voice Steve didn't hear was Wanda's, though he could feel her eyes on him. It didn't matter. All that mattered was getting to the base and ringing as much information as he possibly could from it. Grabbing a data pad and pulling up the coordinates to the base, Steve left the room, ignoring the chaos and calls for him to comeback. 

"Steve, stop." Natasha called, hurrying after him.

"I can't. There's no time, Nat." 

Natasha folded her arms, brow furrowing. "I'm going to ignore that authoritative tone you took with me back there, Rodgers, because I understand you're stressed." 

Steve snorted, thinking to himself how she didn't know the half of it. "I'm going alone. I meant what I said. This is not a discussion. It's an order. Follow it." 

"What the hell has gotten into you?" 

"Nothing." Steve said, shaking his head. 

"He is afraid." Wanda called from down the hallway. Steve's head shot up, following the way her body seemed to glide down the hallway. Her eyes glowed red against the dim light of the fluorescent overhead lamps. 

"Afraid?" Natasha asked.

Wanda nodded, "he fears that asking any of us to come along would be inviting a repeat of how this Bucky became a 'Winter Soldier' in the first place." 

Natasha turned to him, "Is this true?" 

Steve said nothing, only watched Wanda. She too watched him closely. Her body, tight and confident, showed no signs of withering under Steve's gaze. It was almost fascinating how she seemed so unfazed. 

"I won't say it again. I'm going alone." Steve said, finally. Turning to leave, he took one step before he felt fingers softly wrap around his wrist. Steve turned to find Wanda, looking up at him expectantly. 

"There is no need to worry Natasha. He will not be going alone." Wanda said, smiling up at Steve, "I will be going with him." 

"What?" Natasha and Steve asked simultaneously. 

Wanda cocked an eyebrow and asked, "did I stutter?" 

"Wanda..." Steve started but Wanda shot him a glare that made him hesitate. 

"Your mind is a scrambled mess." She said. 

"I thought we said not to pry into people's minds, Wanda?" Natasha asked, then after a beat, she said "not that I'm complaining about it in this situation." 

Wanda scoffed, "I did not need to pry. Not when he's practically screaming it." 

Steve stiffened. "That's not fair, Wanda." 

"What is not fair is your thinking that you can run off and leave those of us that care about you to fret over your safety," Wanda said. 

"I'm trying to keep you all safe." 

"As are we." Wanda said, and took his wrist, laying her palm open in his hand, "They have already made a monster of me. There is nothing left they can do, even if I were to be captured." 

Steve watched her in that moment. Scanning her palm. Despite the obvious marks and calluses of her avengers training, it seemed in all aspects so normal. The map of her life etched into skin. She looked at him like she knew the way his mind was working. He wanted to believe her then. She was strong enough to level the base if she felt it necessary. But that couldn't be a justification. Hydra had already sunk its fangs into her once. There wasn't any reason to involve her with them again, especially not when she had just been freed of them.

He felt trail her fingers up to his temples. Something prodded at the edges of his consciousness. Then, like a switch being flipped in his mind's eye, he saw what she was trying to do. Images flashed before the silver screen of his mind. Images of her time as hydra's genuine pig played out in his mind like a sad horror movie. Wanda, curled up in her cell, struggling to maintain consciousness against the barrage of thoughts and voices in her head, the thoughts of the personnel and soldiers scurrying about the base like demented rats. The pain from submitting herself to all of the experiments. 

A distinct memory burrowed into his brain. Wanda, watching from the corner of her eye, helplessly, as a whirring needle inched closer and closer to her temple. 

 

Steve felt his breath leave him in a gust. The torture. All of it. He understood what she was trying to convey. She was irrevocably tied to this almost as much as he was. This would offer her some closure too. This would let her mend some bridges; shut the door on the pain of the past. 

"Okay," he whispered.

Her smile in response was brilliant. True. Genuine. Teeth so strikingly white they seemed to be made of pearl. Steve couldn't help but think she looked truly marvelous in that moment.

"Be ready in 30 minutes. We're taking the Quinjet," Steve said. 

She nodded, and moved past him, down the corridor to the armory. 

Steve felt Natasha's stare. "What?" 

"You just caved…" She said, almost reverently. 

"I didn't cave. She made a valid point." Steve said, suddenly feeling defensive, "She's tied to this, Nat, just like me. She understands. I owe her the chance to gain the same closure I don't have." 

"She got you to cave," she said again, shaking her head, laughing quietly to herself, "You - the guy who is famous for being stubborn." 

"Thanks Nat..." 

Natasha grinned, "Well you did say you wanted to find shared life experience. I guess it doesn't get closer than Wanda." 

Steve blinked, unsure if Natasha was implying what he though she was. 

"This is a bad idea." She said after a minute, and Steve wondered if she meant the mission or what she implied about his and Wanda's friendship. If he could call it that. Steve decided to go with it being about the mission. 

"You know I'm not budging on this." Steve said, giving Natasha his best smile. Natasha shook her head, obviously anxious. 

"I'm giving you an emergency GPS tracker. If you're not back in 3 days we're coming for you two." 

Steve grinned wide. "Fair enough."

"I'm fitting your suit with a heart monitor as well."

"Nat, I'm 95.... I'm not dead." Steve chuckled, “95 and in the best shape of my life might I add.”

"Not like that you star spangled dope," She said, "It'll relay your heart rate every 30 seconds or so. If it doesn't, you know, because you're dead or something, we're coming." 

Steve shook his head, laughing quietly. "Any other stipulations?" 

"Yeah...” She said reaching up and putting a hand on his shoulder, “Come back in one piece. And don't screw this up with Wanda." 

Steve felt his face heat up for the briefest of moments, but shook the feeling loose and continued down the hall, determined to prep the Quinjet. 

The Hangar always reminded Steve of times before the ice. It was massive, arching wide and tall over his head, housing several jets and military vehicles. It was familiar to Steve, who was used to bunkers and bases. The whole place reminded him of simpler times.

Wanda sat a top a toolbox near the base of the Jet, legs dangling off of the edge, just an inch from the ground. She was dressed in her usual Arctic mission attire. A jet-black thermal suit, combat boots, black scarf, fitted gloves, and her typical red leather overcoat. 

"Ready, partner?" She asked, her accent painting faint nuances to her words. 

Steve nodded. "Are you sure about this?" 

Wanda eyed him. "Your concern is adorable." 

Steve fought the embarrassment that rose to his cheeks and said, "It's what I do." 

"It is one of your better qualities." 

"I'm serious Wanda. If there were one person I’d want by my side in this it would be you. More than anyone else you understand what Hydra can do, what it has done," Steve said trying to convey all the honesty he possibly could, "but I don't want you to feel forced into this. I can do this alone. Really. Hydra has a horrible track record against me." 

She slid off the toolbox then and stood before him. Steve couldn't help but find it funny how she was so much smaller than he was, at least a head shorter, but she some how managed to always seem like the most powerful person in the room.

Maybe because she technically was.

"Hydra has done terrible things to both of us. This will give me... Closure." Then she seemed to shrink away, pausing slightly before mumbling something. 

"What?"

She cleared her throat, "Do you mean that?"

"Mean what?" Steve asked.

"That you want me by your side on this?" She asked, avoiding his eyes. 

Steve smiled, unable to keep it hidden.

Steve reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. Squeezed softly. "Why wouldn't I?" 

"Because I could bring the entire place down over our heads if I lost control?" 

Steve blinked, "Is that supposed to be a negative?" 

Wanda allowed herself a small smile, "I haven't been on too many missions." 

He lead her up the ramp and she followed, however hestitantly, "Always a good time to start." 

She cocked her head, "Stubbornness is one of your least admirable qualities." 

“So I’ve been told,” Steve said, "Wanda we've been training for this. Maybe not for this exact mission but I don't want you on the side lines forever."

"Then let us find your friend." 

Steve nodded. "Let's."


	3. Here To Mars

Wanda was not one to shy away from warmth. Sokovia had been brutally cold in the wintertime. Living on the streets in the dead of December was a task that proved to be barely manageable. If she was honest, it was hell. Pure teeth chattering hell. 

So when she entered the cockpit of the Quinjet to find it startlingly warm, she found herself missing the cold of the Sokovian streets. 

Steve sat in the pilot seat; mask pulled back, blonde hair windswept and unkempt. 

They had not talked much since take off, with Wanda leaving Steve to give him his space. Steve was not a private man by any means, but he was also not a vocal man. He kept his emotions reined in tightly, never allowing them to dictate his actions or decisions. Which was precisely why she had been so adamant about coming with him. The sheer fact that Steve was acting on impulse and feeling had worried her more than she was allowing herself to admit. She had felt those feelings running off him in waves. 

Fear, worry for this fair faced friend she repeatedly had seen dart through his thoughts, and something she had not seen yet from the Captain. Anger. That he had let this all happen. That he still hadn't found his friend. That Steve still hadn't cured him.

She’d thought some space might help him sort out the different emotions roiling about inside him. Apparently she had been wrong. 

She plopped down in the co-pilot seat beside him. 

"Hey," he said, "I thought you had gone to take a nap." 

"I did," she lied, "and now I am here."

He chuckled, "so you are." 

They sat in silence for a beat. Wanda tugged at the collar of her uniform. "Were you cold?" She asks, feeling the sweat bead on her forehead. She found herself fretting over how unattractive that might look. Something she rarely ever worried about.

"No I...just don't like the cold very much. Not a very big fan of snow." 

She wasn't either, but she had a dark feeling it was for a different set of reasons. 

They sat in silence, Wanda finding it odd that it was not an awkward silence. In fact it was a comfortable one. Steve never seemed to press her to talk if the mood did not strike her, and she appreciated that sentiment. It had been one of the qualities her brother had had. Knowing when it was 'quiet time' as he called it. 

"You do that often, don't you?" Steve asked.

Wanda asked, "Do what?" 

"Fiddle around with that necklace you have." 

Wanda blinked, realizing she had in fact been toying with the little braid around her neck. "Do I?" 

Steve nodded absently, “You get that look on your face. Like you’re some where far away." 

Wanda felt her eyes drift downward. To the little square tied around her neck. Sure enough, her forefinger and ring finger played a little dance around the golden inch of metal. 

"Sorry." She said, suddenly wondering if he might scold her for a lack of focus like he did so many of the other avengers. Instead, he eased the controls up and back, letting one tense hand drift from the console to flick several blinking LED switches on the dashboard above them. 

A mechanical voice droned, "Autopilot engaged." The voice sounded eerily similar to the one that spoke to her from the 'intelligent' phone she had been given upon her initiation into the avengers.

"Don't be," Steve said, swiveling in his chair to face her, "Everyone has something." 

Wanda cocked an eyebrow at him, "Something?" 

"A memento, something that..." Steve paused, then he continued, voice low and soft, "…something that keeps the memory of those we've lost alive." 

Wanda felt an odd wave of sadness come over her. She could keep a memory alive, but she wanted her brother. She wanted the real thing. Not a locket strung around her neck. "Would you mind if I ask what's in the necklace?" Steve asked, and Wanda could feel his trepidation in her mind. He feared he would offend her, or he would over step a boundary in trying to be kind and empathetic. Maybe it was that same empathy she had felt from him when she had first gone through his mind that made her do it, but she found herself nodding. Reaching up and undoing the clasp. Pulling the little leather binding from her neck and handing it to him. 

Steve took the locket gingerly, almost reverently. As if he were afraid he would somehow tarnish the memory. He undid the clasp, pulling open the little metal memory, and stared at its contents. 

The look on his face was so soft, so honest, it made Wanda feel almost happy. Happy there was someone that she could share that piece of her with someone and they wouldn't look at her with pity. Instead Steve looked at the locket with empathy, with understanding, and an odd sadness of his own. As if looking at her pain and longing stirred those same emotions within him as well. But Steve never looked at her that way, never looked at her as if she were broken. It was that same empathy and understanding he had looked at her with since the day he met her. It was one of the many reasons he was perhaps her closest friend now. It was the reason she was willing to share these parts of herself. 

It struck her that Steve was the first person she had opened up to since Pietro had passed. The first person that looked at her as a person and not some broken thing. Or worse, a weapon. Maybe that was why she liked him so much. 

That thought brought an odd weightless sensation to her stomach and she found herself looking down and away. Her face felt hot in a way she knew had nothing to do with the stifling heat of the cockpit. 

It was a weird train of thought, though. She had so much darkness, so much pain, and he did to. In spades. But Steve had worked tirelessly to balance that darkness she carried around with his light. She would always be on his side for that.

Steve must have misinterpreted the sudden embarrassment at her thoughts negatively because he immediately looked up at her, suddenly self-conscious and embarrassed. 

Despite him being a few years older than her, Wanda found herself thinking he looked so young at that moment. Like a hurt puppy. 

"Pietro always said he didn't need to see the big picture," Wanda said, "because he had a little one that he would take out and look at every day."

Now that little picture was hers. And she wished with everything she had that it wasn't. 

Steve clasped the locket back up tight and handed it back to her. "He had the right idea." 

Wanda cocked her head to the side. Steve was a man that didn't speak lightly but sometimes he surprised her with how deep his words often rang. 

Steve noticed her query and said, "Sometimes we get so caught in the doom and gloom of the world we live in that we forget the important things." 

Wanda watched as Steve reached down and undid the latch at the neck of his uniform. Tugging at the edge of his shirt, he pulled a silver chain up from beneath the Kevlar armor. On that chain were three little dog tags. No bigger than her thumb. He pulled it up around his neck and pooled the metal in his fist. Steve reached out. Wanda stared at his out stretched hand for a second before stretching out her own, taking the cool metal tags. She held them like she would a child. On each tag was a name. Margaret Carter. James Buchanan Barnes. Steven Rogers. "The people closest to me. The ones that kept me grounded when I became Captain America." 

Wanda nodded, but didn't take her eyes off of the tags in her hands. 

"Are they…?" She left the question hanging in the air, hoping he would fill in the blanks for her. 

"They're alive," Steve said, but the far away look in his eyes made her pause. He said it with such melancholy and she knew, God she knew that it wasn't something quite as simple as black and white. Wanda almost wished it were, the way his eyes drifted away, his voice became low and cold. 

"Steve?" 

He answered her quickly, and as he spoke, he almost looked surprised he was speaking so much. "Peggy has Alzheimer's. Doesn't really remember much of me anymore. Doctors say she hasn't got long, and there's nothing I can do." Steve let his rueful smile show, "Alzheimer's isn't exactly a problem I can fix it with my fists." 

"And James?" 

"Bucky? Well that's who we're going to find." 

Wanda nodded. "He is your brother." 

"In every way but one." 

"I envy you,” She said before she could stop herself. The conviction with which she said it surprised even her.

Steve paused for a moment, then asked, "Why?" 

"Because you still have a family. You have people who still love you above all else." 

Steve's eyes widened. They did not drift from hers. She felt their scrutiny. Not negative, but probing, as if he could find some kind reasoning in the features of her face. She felt oddly shy under his gaze, like she was under a microscope. 

Steve stretched out his hand. "Can I see your pendant again?" He asked. 

Hesitantly, unsure of where this was going, Wanda complied. When the little leather necklace was safely in his hands he pulled the dog tag chain from his neck and set it on his lap. 

Wanda watched as Steve undid the clasp on both her necklace and his. Sliding one of the dog tags off, he strung it like a needle through thread onto her corded necklace. The little tag clinked affectionately next to her locket and Steve handed the necklace back to her. She took it and, despite knowing it might have been rude, immediately inspected the new addition. Her stomach did an odd little flip in time with her heart. The tag read Steve's name, his soldier ID number, and his date of birth.

"I do not understand." She said, surprised at how she sounded simultaneously confused and suspiciously elated. 

"I may not be your family, and I don't ever expect to replace that," Steve said, leveling her with that gaze of his again, "But you are important to me. I carry Bucky's and Peggy's because they help me remember whom I'm fighting for. What I'm fighting for." Steve pointed to hers, "That tag is so you never forget that you still have people who care, people that want you to come home. To be in their lives," Steve smiled, wide and bright, embarrassed despite himself, "I'm not asking you to stop mourning for Pietro. I'm just asking you to remember you're still important to me. You still have a place in other's hearts." 

Wanda sat in silence. She didn't know what to say. In the best way possible. She cradled the tag in her hand, memorizing its numbers and ridges. In that moment, she knew Pietro would have been proud of her, and the friends she made. If anything, they would always be there for her, even if he couldn't be. Steve had shown her that much. Pietro would probably have liked Steve, and it hurt to know he would never be able to see the way he didn't let the darkness inside anyone eclipse the light that always seemed to shine brighter. She could feel her heart hammering in her chest, happy. 

Steve was in her corner. She believed that. She believed him. And she was happy. She had a new friend. Someone she could lean on, someone she could trust. He wasn't Pietro, no one would ever be, but it was a start. And that was all that mattered.


	4. Strange Attractor

Wanda watched from the corner of her eyes. They had infiltrated the base less than stealthy. That probably had to do with her losing her patience and offering to rip a hole in the wall. Which she had proceeded to do…

The inside of the base was massive. Dome shaped. Crates of different chemicals and fluids were stacked neatly about the base. Computers and monitors lined the center of the base like some kind of twisted office space. There was a weapons cache off towards her left. Yet for all it’s grandeur and size, there were so few mercenaries here Wanda found it rather shocking. 

She hurled two hydra agents off the side and proceeded to hover another two up in the air for a few seconds. Then she twirled her fingers and the soldiers heads cracked together like watermelons on concrete and the passed out. 

But this was all passive. Really, all her focus was primarily on Steve. From the corner of her she watched him fight. 

Seeing him in action amazed her even to this day. He made calculations in real time just like everyone else, but it never seemed that way. It always seemed like he was operating on separate plane. The way the shield ricocheted around the large room, taking out thugs left and right, was both amusing and fascinating to watch. 

"Wanda, remember that idea I had?" He called back to her. 

Wanda gulped, not liking where Steve was going, but nodding anyway. 

“Well, time to give it a shot,” Steve said, throwing up his shield against a splattering hail of bullets.

"I think it would be best if we practiced that before I --" 

"Humor me?" Steve called to her.

Wanda swore.

Up went her hands and she directed that little red pull in her gut in Steve's direction, levitating him. She grinned with how effortlessly it came to her when she focused. Steve came up off the ground a few inches, then a foot, then a few yards. 

Wanda felt her concentration heavy at the forefront of her brain. She felt strong, stronger than she had in a long time. Against the bare flesh of her chest, the dog tag Steve had given her vibrated, as if it were thrumming with power of its own. With a flick of her arms she launched Steve like a cannonball. Steve flew through the air, barreling forward. A star spangled bullet straight from a psychic gun. 

He collided with the group of soldiers, punching out this way and that. Five went down. Wanda watched in an absent-minded sort of way. She found herself thinking odd thoughts as she watched the way Steve moved. His back rippled with tendons and muscles flexing. She could feel the tag on her chest, as though it were pulling her to him. Steve’s body maneuvered it’s way around an attack, and Wanda found herself thinking on the only time she had seen Steve without a shirt. She had been too preoccupied at the time to take notice of it. She wondered now if she would still fail to take notice. She silently thought she probably wouldn’t. The idea brought a fading heat to her face and a weird coiling in her stomach. She wiped the imaginative, and admittedly less than appropriate, image from her mind with a figurative hand. 

Steve would have reprimanded her for losing focus, and that idea upset her more than it usually did. So she reigned herself in, found her center, and aligned her breath in a soothing pattern. Her mind cleared, but that faint heat in her body didn’t. 

This was going well. It was all going well. The number of soldiers had been ill prepared and few. Those left in the base must have been stragglers. There had been no more than fifteen when they got there. She suspected some had gotten away though, because they were easily overpowering the remainders. 

Wanda felt her mind wander again. Her mind reached out to Steve’s and she found it. She slipped into it quietly. Like a ghost gliding through the halls. She gasped. Steve’s mind was a jumbled mess of images and emotions. Pictures and snippets of battles whipped around her head as if carried on gusts of wind. 

Trenches. Guns she had only seen in old movies. Snow. Someone falling from the edge of a train car. Down and down into the gaping maw of the chasm below.

Steve must not have noticed her there, swirling around inside his mind. She almost wished he did. His mind was overwhelming. A storm of wars past, of pain not yet relinquished, battlefields not quite left behind. Gun shots echoed around Steve’s mind, melding with the ones rattling on at irregular intervals outside.

Everything was so loud. It was becoming harder and harder to focus. Flinging Steve this way and that. Blocking gun-shots. Flicking away the occasional grenade. Steve would shout and point. She would scramble to hurl him like a cannonball. Gunfire everywhere. Filling her ears, drowning her in their incessant drumming. The sound of Steve's shield shattering bone and bouncing off concrete. Sickening crunching noises as she pulled arms from sockets and crushed bones with a twirl of her fingers. Screams of pain. 

So many screams of pain. 

Minds made raging lances of pain as she waged her psychic assault. Lances that she couldn’t block out. Filling her head with flashes of terror and agony.  
It was becoming all too much. Her control slipped. Wanda felt her shield of red mist drop. Just for a second. She panicked, feeling suddenly naked, and very much afraid. A split second passed before she clumsily threw back up her red, wavering wall.

"They're retreating!" Steve shouted to her, and Wanda knew what Steve needed her to do. Seal the back door. They were making a break for it. 

Wanda outstretched her hand. She sent that familiar psychic hand push out for the group of agents hoping to escape. Her mind swelled and bolstered then –

When had the world started spinning?

Wanda’s vision dipped, and she went with it. She took a half step, steadied herself, and tried again.

She felt faint on her feet. She wobbled a few steps before righting herself. She felt warm. Really warm. Her stomach felt like someone kept poking her with a hot coal. 

She took one step...two....then dropped. 

She felt so warm. Then she noticed that warm feeling was moving. Seeping down her stomach. Almost in a trancelike haze she reached down and patted her stomach, still trying to make the word stop spinning. 

Her hand came away red and sticky. Darker than her uniform. It felt like a white hot knife twisting just beneath her ribs every time her fingers ghosted across her abdomen. 

She stared at her hand.

It dawned on her so agonizingly slowly. What was happening. Her thoughts feeling like molasses.

Blood. Her blood. 

But when did....

Her body shut down. Her mind went blank. All the she could feel was the swimming, sinking feeling pervading her skull and the fire that was seeping out of the little hole just beneath her ribs. 

Had it always been this cold in the base? 

It had been so warm when they got there…

She was dimly aware of the hydra thugs slipping past the door, slipping away from them. Wanda felt bad in that moment. Steve would be so upset. She would tell him she was sorry. 

Darkness crept at the edges of her vision. Her world had become a blur of color and darkness. Spots crept along the corners of her peripherals, but every time she tried to catch them, they darted away.

She had never been shot before. Wanda couldn’t stand how agonizingly aware of the pain she was. Did it always hurt this much?

Someone was calling to her. 

Someone was pressing in on her mind, begging for entrance. She felt thoughts lazily darting through her. 

Fear, panic, worry, regret. Then something she couldn’t recognize.

The last thought Wanda had before unconsciousness abruptly took her was that she thought she heard Steve calling her name. She thought to herself, she had never heard Steve Rogers sound so worried before.


	5. Do It Alone

Wanda wondered why the world seemed so hazy. So bleak and cold. Her skin itched faintly, and hummed with buzzing veins and synapses. She had a vague memory dart through her mind, too quickly to make much sense of it, but she recognized the feeling it brought.

She made to moan, but her mouth felt swollen and filled with cotton. Her tongue felt fat in her mouth, lulling about left and right without any kind of coherent syllables being formed.

The room around her cleared into focus. Slowly but surely. White walls and beeping machines came into shape, not fully solidified but getting there. Her head ached.

There was someone sitting near her. Wanda realized her hand was the only thing that felt warm. Every other part of her felt lifeless and cold.

Christ, why did her head hurt so much?

It was like a cross between the worse hangover she’d ever had and being hit by a truck. 

Sleep came back quickly, taking Wanda with a hush and a whisper. She didn’t fight it.

 

* * * 

 

When Wanda opened her eyes next, she had no idea how much time had passed, but she recognized the room. Everything came into sharp focus this time, and she blinked a few times to clear the last of sleep’s long embrace.

There was a beeping machine in the corner, about a foot or two from her head. A little green line winked away in time with her heat beat. Above her head, an IV dripped languidly. Her eyes trailed down, following the little clear tube that ended in the crook of her arm, held by tape. Wanda fought the sudden rise of panic that rose up inside her chest. Those thoughts from before had begun to take form inside her head. No longer hazy. No longer out of reach.

Memories of the hydra experiments filled her head. She remembered thick, bubbling green substances being pumped into the same spot on her arm all those years ago.

Yet she felt something tighten around her hand. Her mind reached out, brushing against a swirling pool of worry and guilt.

A hand reached up and brushed hair from her forehead, and Steve’s face came into view. 

“Hey,” he said quietly. 

Wanda noticed his smile, as if seeing it for the first time. She noticed how relieved he looked. His eyes were so soft, that pretty, swirl of subdued colors that made the orbs so pleasant to look at. His thumb continued to make tiny circles on her forehead, pushing aside the sweat and messy hair that had covered her face. His fingertips were warm, soothing, and she found herself welcoming the touch. She leaned into it, only lightly aware of doing so.

“Hi,” she said lamely after a pause, and struggled to sit up for a moment before Steve gently eased her back down. Her head swam and the room spun briefly. She groaned. “What happened?”

Steve hesitated for a moment, then said, “You were shot.”

Wanda laughed, though she was sure it came out closer to a breathless wheezing, “Oh. Right.”

Steve frowned, “Wanda it’s not funny. You could have died.”

She made a little huffing noise, attempting to be humorous, but her throat wouldn’t let the sound come out smoothly, and she immediately felt embarrassed with how ugly the noise ended up. “Remind me of that every time we step out of the base.”

“Wanda…”

But she cut him off, “Steve. I am okay.” Then she shivered, “Cold though.”

Steve moved away from her, withdrawing his hand from her forehead, and she whimpered. She reached out for his hand weakly, missing the warmth and the comfort it brought her. Steve spun on his heel; worry quickly spreading across his face. He was back at her side in a second, inspecting everything.

“What is it? What’s wrong? What hurts?”

She let out an exasperated sigh, “Stop.”

“Stop? Stop what? What’s wrong?”

“Stop pacing. I am fine. You are giving me a headache.” Or at least a bigger one, she thought to herself. Maybe it was the same headache, or the pervasive shivers she seemed to be having that made her outstretch her hand and prod him.

“What is it?” Steve asked, still on edge.

“Hand. Now.” She said.

Steve blinked and cocked an eyebrow, but offered her his hand anyway. She took it and placed it back on her forehead, revealing in the returned warmth and comfort.

Steve let out a small laugh, tight and forced, “You bounce back quick.”

“After everything I have been through? Being shot is the most normal thing I have experienced in a long time.”

Steve grew somber again, and his face betrayed the guilt that Wanda was beginning to sense roiling around inside his brain. “It’s not a normal thing, Wanda. And we aren’t going to pretend it is.”

Wanda dismissed him with a roll of her eyes, “Stop talking.”

“How are you feeling?” Steve said, ignoring her, “Any discomfort? Pain? Nausea?”

“No, Doctor Rodgers, I am alright,” She replied, “Just cold and the wound itches quite a bit but otherwise I am fine.”

“I’ll get the doctor. See if he can do anything about that.”

When he made to withdraw his hand, Wanda reached up and snatched it, squeezing it as forcefully as she could.

Steve panicked, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Wanda shook her head, “Stop apologizing.”

Steve blinked, “I didn’t ap—“

“You were thinking it. Quite loudly.”

Steve’s face cracked just a little bit. The soldier gave way to the man beneath. Wanda begun to see just how much this had been hurting him. She could feel it churning away inside him. The guilt for letting her accompany him. The fear that his rashness had almost cost her life. Wanda did her best to quell those emotions with her own. She pushed them at him as aggressively as she could, hoping to smother his guilt with her need to remind him that everything was alright. That she was alive and okay. 

Steve seemed to pause then, weighing her emotions against her own. A moment later, his face hardened, and the soldier had returned. His hand withdrew from her forehead and with it the warmth and grounding that she had enjoyed.

"I'll get Banner and the doctor." He said, and didn't wait for her response. 

She huffed, exhausted, and reclined into the uncomfortable hospital bed. 

She waited, realizing that the necklace around her neck had been removed. She panicked for a moment, wondering where it had gone. What would Pietro of her carelessness? That thought spread further, trailing out along the roots of the concept. How would he have scolded her for being so careless? For being so easily distracted? She found her missing his almost parental scolding. For all his carelessness and reckless abandon Pietro never let that stop him from being a wise, and level-headed brother. Or at least, not when the situation was appropriate. She felt her hands numbly ghosting along the spot on her neck where her necklace clasp had been. She felt empty, naked without it. 

Wanda wondered why Steve had shut her out. His mind had gone blank. A noise similar to a gong going off had sounded out and then she had been forced away. It felt a little odd, being simply in her own head. Having spent a significant chunk of time tapped into Steve's over the last two days and then suddenly going from living in two minds to being forced out into just her own was... Disconcerting. To say the least. 

Banner came in, pulling open the door to her room quietly and expertly. A S.H.I.E.L.D Doctor followed him in, looking a little miffed. Probably had been called in on his day off. 

Banner reviewed her, although admitting he wasn't exactly trained for this, but assuring her he had a solid idea of what it was like to have an altered physiology. 

The SHIELD doctor and Banner made the process as quick and painless as possible for her. Asking her to shift this way and that to see if the stitches had set correctly. When there had been little to no discomfort in the movements Wanda asked how long she was going to be held for. 

Banner glanced at the doctor, and Wanda could feel how Banner saw this question as a little out of his depth, which Wanda disliked. Banner would let her out. The other Doctor might not. And Wanda hated clinics and hospitals and doctors and anything resembling an office where the sick might go. 

It all was a reminder of the experiments she had endured. The hallways she had been lead through, so hopped up on whatever drugs they had pumped into her that the walls seemed to wiggle and bend into tubes rather than angles and squares. 

After inspecting the wound once more, the doctor conceded that she had been lucky and the bullet had missed pretty much all of her internal organs and major arteries. The angry Doctor concluded that she would be held for a few more hours for simple monitoring and tests and then released if she so chose. 

Wanda conceded to the agreement quickly. Everything smelled of disinfectant and sterilized bleach or something of that nature. It made her skin crawl. The whole room felt soulless and time seemed to drag on at the slowest possible interval. She wondered how many had died in the same spot she was sitting in. The morbid thought made her shiver. Though she had been prone to less than pleasant thoughts and anxieties prior to her avengers initiation, the white impersonality of the room seemed to amplify that character flaw. She couldn't wait for the time to end. When Banner and the doctor finished and left, Wanda sat, trying to breath through her mouth to keep out the sickening smell of cleanings past. 

Wanda hoped Steve would come back. Would help her keep stay awake. Keep her from dreaming up the inevitable scolding Pietro would have given her. The thought made her heart ache. He would have scolded her for days. She wondered what he would say about her recklessness. If he would criticize her trust in Steve. Wanda felt a weird defiance in that thought. It hadn't been a danger in trusting Steve that had landed her here. That had been entirely her own fault (which made her feel inept and foolish) and she would have argued that quite adamantly. 

Still... The fact that she had been distracted so easily made her feel guilty and childish. Maybe Steve who had been wrong to put his trust in her. Wanda wondered if he thought she had failed him. If he had been wrong to misplace his trust in her. 

That brought a strange tightening in her stomach. Anxiety in a pure form. It made her mouth fill with sour saliva and she felt a weird need to spit. She shook her head and resolved to keep those thoughts from taking root. Though as the time crawled on and the fact that Steve hadn't returned made her feel as if there might be some truth to them. 

 

* * *

 

Move faster. Hit harder. Two brief thoughts, wound over and over each other until one bled into the next. The sandbag shuttered against the force behind each blow. Each grunt, each sharp exhale, each twitch and release of coiled muscles brought on a fresh new wave of guilt. 

It was all becoming so routine now. Finding thoughts. Playing them back over and over again like broken records. Ironically that was a phrase that still made sense to Steve.

The night was loud. Steve thought that was good. The cicadas and crickets could be as noisy as they wanted. It would drown out the sound of his fists. 

The sandbag tipped back, swinging from the force of Steve’s fist, tipping up almost parallel to the ceiling, before swinging back in retaliation. Steve sidestepped, ducking out of the way and reeled back, muscles tightening, ready to strike.

He pictured the man with the gun. He saw it all play out in slow motion. 

A dawning sense of horror creeping its way into his consciousness. The red mist wasn’t surrounding her. For just the briefest of moments. Wanda had this look on her face, a look Steve couldn’t quite put his finger on. Steve realized too late. Always too late. 

The sound had been deafening. 

At first Steve hadn’t seen her even falter. He had thought the bullet might have missed Wanda entirely. She had continued on, and the mist had returned, and he had turned away. 

And when he had turned back, she was on the floor. 

A thousand thoughts had filtered their way through his head. 

The sandbag shuttered, and gave, exploding beneath the force of the blow. 

She had been cold. He couldn’t tell if it was from the air, or if she had lost too much blood. It had been so hard to focus.

The chain above snapped, and the sandbag launched across the room. Spraying its contents across the gym. 

He had panicked. He was going to lose another friend. He was going to lose someone else he cared about. Because of Hydra. Because he had been too careless. Had let himself get distracted. Hadn’t kept her safe. 

Another broken promise. 

Lying in pieces all over the floor. Just like the sandbag. 

Steve reached down and grabbed another one, stringing it up by the reinforced chain. He curled back, and just like the gun, he fired off a punch. The sandbag swung beneath his anger. The chain groaned. Steve sidestepped away, ignoring the bloody imprint his fist made on the bag. 

He fired again, three quick punches in rapid succession. Blurring and booming against the rough leather. This time he felt the blood run down his wrist. 

Again. Don’t you dare stop. 

Steve listened to the voice, the angry little sound in his head. 

How could he have let this happen? How could he have been stupid enough to put someone else in Hydra’s way? Was he doomed to never learn from his mistakes? 

He screamed, and the bag shattered. He watched it fly across the room as if on springs, and hit the wall, spilling its contents, with a sickening similarity to how Wanda had bled. His breathing was ragged, and Steve could feel his heart thundering. 

But the rapid beating had nothing to do with his body. Steve wasn’t tired. He was angry. He couldn’t get the image out of his head. The way she had looked, asleep on that hospital bed, clad in a flimsy white gown, gooseflesh on her skin. The way he had to remind himself that the doctors needed him to leave if they’re were going to do their job and save her. 

God, he hadn’t wanted to leave. The thought made his stomach sink. 

Her hand had been so warm when Banner had convinced him it was time to leave the room.

He chained up another bag. Took a step, ready to strike out, but stopped. 

How many people were going to be hurt because of his carelessness? Wanda had joined the team at his request. Moved at his belief that she could rise above what Hydra had made her. Maybe if he had just let her go on her way, maybe if he had just kept his mouth shut and let her have a chance at being just a normal person free of all the heroics and danger the life of an Avenger provided. Maybe then she wouldn’t be walking around with a knotted little scar on her lower abdomen for the rest of her life. 

Steve remembered Banner’s words to him. 

'She got lucky. Two centimeters up and it would have passed through her kidney. She might not be comfortable wearing bathing suits for a while, but she’ll be alright. Still… this was close. Too close.' Banner had whispered to him as the other doctor had changed her bandages.

Steve had asked something, he didn’t remember what, but he knew the sound of the panic in his voice. Banner had told him to settle down, and Steve asked if there had been anything he could do. Banner had nodded. 

Stay with her. She’s should have someone by her side when she wakes up. God knows, I would want that. 

So Steve had stayed. And his heart had done happy little flips in his chest when she had woken up okay, safe and sound, and feeling alright. 

The sandbag groaned in protest as his fists began to beat an indent into the leather. Steve felt torn. In his mind, he was envisioning beating the ever-living snot out of the Hydra grunt with the gun. 

There was violence on Steve’s mind. 

A kind of rage that is so completely out of character for him, if his fists hadn’t been leaving bloody craters in the training bag before him Steve might have actually been afraid. 

Afraid of what this might mean. Afraid that he’s adding too many possible casualties to his already dangerous life. Afraid he was letting too many in, and paving the way for further heartbreak. He couldn’t handle another Bucky. Today, Wanda had almost become that. 

His grunts of frustration and fury rose in volume and frequency. He was dimly aware of a strange heat that was beginning to permeate his body. Starting in the pit of his stomach and racing out down his limbs. He felt tight and on edge and expectant in all the wrong places. Like the first time he had kissed Peggie.

But that didn’t stop him. Steve would have no distractions. This was his night. It was time for his punishment. 

All at once that heat faded, making him pause just long enough to shiver. “So this is what you have been doing with your nights?” 

Steve froze. 

Could she really be up and moving?

He spun on his heel and found Wanda leaning against the doorway to the gym. She was wearing short, tight running shorts that Steve wasn’t sure how she could possibly sleep in. But when his eyes passed over the cut off shirt she wore he felt his heart sink. On her left side was a mess of gauze and bandages, marring what was otherwise smooth, toned skin. 

Steve hadn’t realized he was staring, but when she cocked an eyebrow and made her way into the gym on uncertain feet with equally uncertain steps, he found himself looking away, unable to hold her gaze. 

He squared his shoulders, clenched his fist, and let them fly. 

“You’re getting blood everywhere.”

Steve’s breath hitched in his throat. He thought to say something, but in the end decided against it. 

“Not exactly a wise decision, no?” 

Steve let out the breath he’d been holding, and said simply, “No. No it’s not.” 

“Then why do you continue to injure yourself?” 

“Because I heal fast.” 

Wanda tapped her fingers on her thigh, “I see then. So this is simply punishment.” Wanda stifled a sigh. 

Steve watched her. Her hair had begun to fall out from the messy bun she had tied it up in. She looked worse for wear, yet to Steve, she still managed to carry herself with all of the power he knew her small body housed. Still, he knew. God, he was so painfully aware of just how close that same body had come to breaking today. Steve hadn’t protected her; he’d been so caught up in his fight, his need for answers, his desire to find Bucky that he had left her on her own. And Wanda had certainly paid the price for it.

But that thought wasn’t an answer. So Steve did the only thing he could think of and shrugged. When his fist connected with the leather, the bag swung and before it could pendulum its way back, it froze. 

Red mist swirled around it. Steve turned to find Wanda with one hand outstretched, the other wrapped around her gauzed side, red wisps of energy twining around her fingertips. “I do not like being ignored,” She said. 

Steve sighed, and dropped his hands. Wanda seemed to relax, and the swirling tendrils of red power drifted away. Steve crossed the room, undoing the bandages around his knuckles, and said, “I’m sorry.” 

Silence passed between them for a moment and Steve could feel her at the edges of his mind, probing, looking for entrance. A kind of shiver going up and down his spine, making the hairs of the back of his neck stand. 

“Why are you doing that?” 

“Doing what?” 

Steve sighed, “That. Looking into my mind.”

Wanda cocked her head, “Because you will not speak it.” 

Steve felt his teeth grind, “What do you want me to say?” 

“You could say a lot of things.” 

“I could.” 

Wanda’s mouth tightened and her chin rose in defiance, “But you will not.” 

Steve opened his mouth, but closed it, feeling his stomach sink. What could he say? What could possibly make this whole situation any better? 

Wanda seemed to sense his trepidation, and she let out a huff in response. She closed the distance between them slowly, and Steve knew she was giving him the opportunity to back away. To turn and run if that’s if he wanted to do. Her fingers gently wrapped around his blood knuckles. She grabbed several bandages from his gym bag. She held up his hands one at a time, taking her time wrapping the bandages around the inflamed digits. 

“Why will you not talk to me?” 

“I…” Steve started, but trailed off.

“Is it because you think I am weak now?” Wanda asked. 

“No! No. Not at all, it’s not that,” Steve replied. 

“I know what it is,” Wanda said as she finished up. 

“Then why do you keep asking?” Steve replied, hating how harsh it came out. 

Wanda was silent for a long while then. She absently scratched at her wound, and Steve couldn’t help the passing blush that dusted his face when he realized how short her shirt was. 

“Because I want you to say it of your own free will,” Wanda said, “It will mean more that way.”

“Wanda…”

“I want you to find strength in me, as I have come to find it in you.” 

Steve felt his mouth open and close like a fish gasping. He could feel the courage it had taken Wanda to work up just to say that. He could feel the hesitance rolling off her in waves. By saying that, it meant opening up. It meant showing a part of herself she had not shown to anyone since Pietro’s passing. Steve knew despite their growing closeness that they were only scratching the surface. Steve stood dumbfounded by the honesty she pushed at him in his mind. There had to be a equally profound way to respond to that bombshell.

He could feel the comfort she had come to find in him. He wasn’t Pietro, Steve knew that and so did she, but he was a friend. An ally. Someone she could trust without fear of reproach or rejection. 

“Wanda…I—“ 

But Wanda held up her hand. “You can tell me when you are ready. That is fine. I will not force it from you. I want this to come naturally. I want this bond to be a give and take one.” 

Steve swallowed, feeling like he suddenly had a stone blocking his throat. 

“You can talk to me whenever you are ready. About anything,” she said, “You have been patient with me. It is my turn to offer you the same.” 

Steve could hear the invitation behind the words. She was offering him the chance to tell her why he was out running laps at three in the morning. Or decimating sandbags when he should be sleeping and recovering for the next mission. 

“I trust you,” She said, “And I understand how…difficult…it is to discuss things like…this,” she motioned to the gym and his bloody knuckles, “But I have come to find that trust and acceptance in you, Steve,” she gave his hands the faintest of squeezes, “I hope you know you have the same from me.” 

With that she let his hands go, and tucked away the bandages and antiseptic cream she had been applying. 

Wanda had taken a few steps from him, her dark hair swaying in loose strands falling from that haphazard bun. Steve watched her go. Her footsteps were like thunderclaps. Or were those his heartbeats? 

Steve couldn’t tell. 

Why did it so suddenly feel like he was watching a door close? And before he could stop himself, Steve was speaking. 

“I’m afraid.” 

Wanda stopped. Her shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath. She turned to look at him. Wanda’s eyes felt like fireballs. Warm and welcoming. When had she become the one person that Steve felt like he could understand? Or was it that she understood him so simply, so effortlessly?

“Afraid?” Wanda asked, one dark eyebrow arching, maybe finding the notion that the paragon of American bravery was afraid of something a little confusing. 

Steve didn’t know what to do, what to say, so he just shrugged. He felt like he was working through fog. Unsure, feeling his way along the lines and the walls like he’d been suddenly struck blind.

He had opened up to her before, so why was it so hard now? Was it because it was her who had needed the comfort and not him? Was because comforting was so much easier than being comforted?

She cocked her head at him, imploring him to continue. Wanda didn’t force him, rather the gesture felt weirdly patient, curious almost. Maybe she sensed his new hesitance, and she too was thrown off by the sudden confusion that boiled away in his stomach.

“Why are you afraid?”

Steve could feel himself caving beneath the look in her eyes. She looked just as open and understanding as she had when she’d offered to join him on the mission. Steve felt his teeth chew a worried line in his lip. He wondered what the price of his honesty would be. Would it protect her in the future? Would it make him seem weaker in her eyes? Why was it so much harder to give advice than to receive it? The uncertainty of the whole situation was becoming almost as terrifying as facing it.

“Because…” and Steve couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. Wanda took a step forward, and then her mind twined out and closed the distance. Steve could feel her slipping through the cracks of his own thoughts like water through his hands, filling him with a sense of comfort. Suddenly Wanda seemed to exist within a space all her own. A space she would welcome him to share.

She reached out, fingertips resting on his shoulder, “You do not have to answer if you are not ready.”

“I’m afraid because I’ve lost so much.”

“Steve we all have. No one would fault you for that.”

“It’s more than that.”

Wanda’s eyes seemed to probe his. Steve could feel the ice crawling back up his skin. The cold was here to take him away. To swallow him up whole. Wanda must have felt it to because she shivered, and rubbed her arms absently. Gooseflesh had broken out across her arms. 

“When I lost Bucky it ripped a hole in me. I didn’t know it could hurt that much to lose someone. And when you were hurt…I thought I was going to go through all of that again.”

“But you didn’t,” she said, ducking her head to meet his eyes.

“I know, but all I can think about is ‘how many more friends am I going to lose?’ When I formed the Avengers with the others, I kept looking at this team like a group of soldiers and the more we do this whole thing, the more I realize these are my friends. And they keep getting hurt." 

Wanda smiled slowly, “I see.”

“I can’t do it again. I can’t keep watching the people who matter to me get hurt.” Steve said, feeling his voice lose its even edge, and soon his words were tumbling from his lips in rapid bursts, “I can’t lose another friend. My friends are all I have now.” Steve shook his head, feeling his heart thundering away in his chest like the booming of some primitive drum, “Don’t you see? I’m a man out of time. I have everything to lose, and so little to gain.” Steve ran a hand through his hair, “And the one person I have to gain – uhh, back -- I put others in jeopardy for.”

“Steve…”

But he was too far-gone now. His words had lost the tempered steel that usually lined them. They came out raw and swollen with sadness and fear he had spent so long repressing. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should have been at your side. I should have been focused. You’ve got a scar for the rest of your life because I was careless. There’s no excuse for that.”

Wanda said, slow and steady, “Steve, nothing is going to happen to us. I am alive and well. We all are. You are not to blame. We will try harder next time.”

Steve shook his head, wondering how he could make her see. “When I formed this team, you were all strangers. Soldiers with a common mission, soldiers I could lead, knowing that putting our lives on the line was part of the job. An inevitability that we all had accepted and expected.”

“And now? You no longer want to lead?”

“Every time we step out of the mansion I can feel that little pit of fear in my stomach getting bigger. You saw into my head. You know that-“

“That you think constantly, ‘What happens the next time I step out of the base with five friends and come back with only four?’ I know.” Wanda said.

Wanda was silent then.

Steve, at an utter lose for words, threw the full force of his thoughts at her, pleading with her to understand the fear that he had packed away for so long. Would he be able to survive if Nat was gunned down by Ultron? Could he face Clint’s grave if it ever came to that? Would he have the words to properly eulogize Tony if the need came to that, or would he choke and run? Would he ever find someone who understood the aches he felt as well as Wanda did?

“You’ve become a part of my life that I’m not sure I would be willing to forfeit for the sake of the greater good anymore. And I was so wrapped up in saving Bucky that I almost let that happen. Don’t you understand Wanda? I let myself be so wrapped up, so damn blinded, by the need to save Bucky, to fix the one void that I still have sitting in my heart, from my life before Captain America, that I let you pay the price for it.” Steve let his eyes drift down and away from hers, unable to face her, so let her see how weak he felt.

Wanda was silent for a long while. Steve let his eyes stay glued to the ground. He didn’t want to face her. He shut his mind off from her. He didn’t want to hear what she thought. After all, Captain America had just admitted that maybe he wasn’t fit to lead anymore. That he was allowing fear to rule his actions. He was letting himself become selfish.

Wanda reached up then, and her fingertips brushed across his cheek. Steve met her eyes as her fingers twined through his hand. She seemed to hesitate then. Choosing her words. Playing them around behind her teeth, searching for the feel of them.

“Some time ago, I asked you if you knew how to go on living after losing what mattered most. You said you did not know.”

“I don’t.”

“Neither do I. But I know I am willing to try to find out together if you are.”

She gave his fingers a squeeze.

“Come,” she said. And when Wanda tugged, Steve found himself following.

She led them down the hallway, back into the kitchen, and out into the common area. The room was dark, save for the eerie blue light of the city in the distance. Wanda reached up and flicked on one of the lamps that sat on a table beside the massive luxury couch. She pulled him along, and stopped in front of the plush leather monstrosity.

Steve looked between her, and the gaudy sofa. Wanda lifted a thin, dark eyebrow.

“You can sit, or I can make you. You’re choice.”

Steve hesitated for a moment longer, and then sank into the admittedly comfortable pillows. Wanda grabbed the remote from the table across from the couch. It was a thin, silvery piece of technology; one Steve was still unfamiliar with and had yet to master.

Wanda tossed Steve a blanket before snagging one for herself. She sat beside him, making a funny little ‘oof’ noise as she sunk into the cushions. She raised the remote and tapped a button with her thumb. From the ceiling descended a rather large screen. Tapping another button, the screen flashed to life.

Different movies and television shows danced across the screen in separate lines. Wanda navigated them deftly, jumping from this movie banner to that.

“Wanda—“

“My brother had a favorite film.” She said softly, cutting him off, “He would watch it whenever he was upset or stressed or unsure.” Wanda tapped another little knob on the remote and the list disappeared for a search bar, “For whatever reason, the film helped him think. Pietro found it calming.”

Steve watched her, bathed in the light of the screen before them. Had her eyes always been so big? So brown?

The little cursor on the screen finished clicking away, and a banner popped up on the screen. In big, bold letters the banner read Cinema Paradiso.

“We were afforded few things when we were under Hydra’s thumb. However books and films were offered to us regularly.” She said, “Pietro fell in love with this movie the first time he watched it.”

“I’ve never seen it.”

“I have been too afraid to watch it since his funeral,” she said, quiet, almost a whisper, then she turned to Steve and her voice grew steady, “Will you watch it with me?”

Steve felt confusion wash over him for a minute, but then almost reverently, he nodded. “Yes,” He said.

Wanda smiled. Big and bright. She stood up quickly, rushing back to the kitchen area, “I’ll make some popcorn.”

Steve watched her work, and found his eyes drifting back to the movie screen. In her own way, Wanda was trying to help him. If Pietro found solace and a kind of clarity through the film, maybe he would too. She understood that maybe he needed something to help him sort his thoughts. For her to share something so closely related to Pietro felt both good and terrifying. She was offering him a chance to help both her and himself.

When she returned, she plopped herself down into the cushions, and offered him the bowl. Steve felt his stomach grumble longingly, and he plucked several pieces from the bowl. Wanda smiled at the sound of his stomach. She scooted closer, so their shoulders touched faintly, and placed the popcorn between them, so it rested on both of their legs.

If Steve hadn’t broken in front of her earlier, he might have felt embarrassed. Now he enjoyed the warmth of her skin against his. The comfort he took in having her close. In knowing that despite the way he had fallen apart, she still cared to be around him, that she thought no less of him.

And so they sat, watching the scenes play out on the massive screen before them. Laughing when the film showed its heart. Feeling the tense sadness when the plot dipped to its most disheartening. Steve found himself being drawn into the beauty of it all. And within the newfound appreciation, some of the holes in his heart seemed to knit themselves back together. It was…nice. He barely noticed when Wanda’s head dipped down and nestled into his shoulder.

Steve looked to find her asleep, peacefully unaware of the intimacy of her position. It reminded Steve of all the old films from his time. Steve went to wake her, but instead thought better of it.

She seemed so serene. The idea of waking her seemed almost cruel. She looked beautiful, hair falling about his shoulder, blissfully quiet and finally unburdened by grief. Yet, her beauty didn’t come from a physical standpoint, though Steve would silently admit he was growing more and more aware of that aspect of Wanda, rather it was in the way she lacked smoothness. She wasn’t some kind of porcelain, pristine, unmarred angel. She was nothing but rough edges. And for whatever reason, Steve found that to be her best quality. It made her seem so perfectly human, despite the amazing abilities she possessed. So he let her be. Knowing she would a have a creak in her neck, and might not get the most comfortable sleep, he was glad she at least found it. He’d seen her insomnia first hand. He would have given up a lot to know she could find a night of simple, uninterrupted rest.

So he followed her lead. Leaning his head back, Steve listened to the characters speak in a language not his own. He listened, and finally, he slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey Everyone,
> 
> I guess it’s about time that I finally attempt to make one of these author’s notes that I see everyone doing at the end/start of their stories. I’m still all relatively new to this so hopefully this won’t be too intrusive to the story or your (hopeful) enjoyment.
> 
> I’ll admit, I was totally not expecting this story to have any traction. Honestly, I started this story because I have zero experience in writing romance, and I wanted to get some practice in before I started on writing the romantic sub-plot in one of my own original stories. So I picked one of my favorite pairings and tried to see if I could craft an interesting story. I fully expected to be so horrendous at romance that I would end up either discontinuing it or just wrapping it up pretty quickly and pretending I never made the attempt in the first place. But I ended up getting some really wonderful reviews, which totally took me by surprise, and was recommended I try and post the story here. It’s always a fantastic feeling to hear that people are enjoying what you’re writing, and it definitely fuels the fire, keeps me eager to update, and helps me know what I’m doing right. So please keep those reviews coming and if you’ve made it this far, please leave one if you can. Means a lot. 
> 
> In the mean time, I hope you enjoy chapter 5. Leave a review, or a favorite, or a follow if you can. 
> 
> Enjoy, 
> 
> Poet


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